How far is too far? Let’s rage about fees in games.

I don’t remember where I first saw this, but it stuck in the back of my mind that a recent release, Metal Gear Survive, was charging for save slots. I promptly muttered a few curse words at such balls as this company possessed and moved on with my life. Later however, in a moment of quiet, it bubbled back up to the surface of my coffee soaked brain. These asshats. Are charging. For save slots. I had to find out whether such insanity was true and confirmed that…yes. It is. Now…I don’t play Metal Gear and I don’t believe I will. But the sheer gall that any company would have to have to charge people to save their game blows my mind. So much so that I feel I need to rant about this.

Let’s face it, mirco-transactions and their ilk aren’t going anywhere. DLC content, in game currency, cosmetic items that need real money to be purchased, stuff like this has become an extremely profitable staple for many companies. Several games I talked about on here like Brave Exvius thrive on making you shell out a bunch of money in the hopes of summoning good (or well liked) characters. But these games also include ways to farm their currency in the game. It may be tedious and annoying, it not be the easiest thing ever (and is usually limited), but you can play the game successfully without spending cash. Exvius and Fire Emblem Heroes for example are both pretty generous with passing out free currency to support this.

MMO’s like WoW or SWTOR tend to have a lot of additional transactions too, despite being subscription based (primarily). But these are for things like cosmetic items for outfitting your character, mounts or pets to collect, or paid services for editing your characters or cheating them to max level. Sounds like it defeats the point of playing the game, but when you’re on character number fourteen that level boost is looking awful tempting.

I have mixed feelings when it comes to DLC. For the most part when a game developer puts up DLC it adds a decent chunk of content to the game in question. Skyrim, Breath of the Wild, games like this tend to gain a lot from DLC and refresh the experience. Sure, it’s annoying to need to essentially pay the cost of a second game when all is said and done, but you do (usually) get good value in that case.

See the trend here though? These are all instances of games that utilize micro-transactions in some way shape or form. And love them or hate them, one thing remains blatantly true: you can pretend they don’t exist. Not one of these types of scenarios mandates you pay them anything more than you did to get the game in the first place. Sure you might want to download the twenty different color variations for your favorite characters skin for an extra $5…but you don’t have to. You don’t need to buy every mount that Blizzard throws up onto their In-Game store (I will) in order to enjoy the game. Even phone games, who are notorious for their pay-to-win approach don’t mandate that you shell out to them. They might drive you to it, but they don’t come right out and make you.

But what Konami has done here represents a frightening step in a rather disgusting direction. Yes, you can argue that you don’t need to unlock multiple saves to play the game. They do give you one for free. But how does this look? You’ve already paid for the game. Why should you now need to pay additional fees just to enjoy it? Like I said, I don’t play Metal Gear, but I do know this one is open world. And in open world games my friends, how often do you save to one slot? I play a ton of open world games, and before major undertakings or decisions, I save all over the place to come back later and explore the other options. And they’re forcing you into a position where you can either just try to deal with the one save, or shell out for more. On top of that? Remember how I said Exvius and such tend to give out a lot of their in-game currency? Or at least have ways to earn them in game? Yeah, that isn’t the case here. Metal Gear Survive doesn’t include a way to earn their paid currency besides buying it.

I’m not writing this to come out and shit on a game I’ve never played. But this level of money-grubbing pisses me off on a fundamental level. It isn’t limited to Konami either. Seeing games get re-released, and then re-re-released with small improvements or upgrades, for example, as both Square Enix and Bethesda (just to name a few that immediately come to mind) have done infuriates me. To need to pay for a second game that is just a refined version of the one I already bought is an insult when it could be done via a less painful DLC option or something. (Less so in Bethesda’s case, since the Skyrim remaster was free to download on Steam, at least if you had the original).

Seriously…

I could go on forever so I’ll wrap this up. What do you think? Am I just getting ticked off over nothing or do you agree that this kind of set up is out of line? Let me know in the comments below, I’d love to hear your thoughts on this. Happy gaming all, talk to you Tuesday!